


The Devil's Violinist

by Tigresse



Series: The Devil Trilogy [1]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Caring Mycroft Holmes, Dark Sherlock Holmes, Devil Jim Moriarty, M/M, References to David Garrett, References to Paganini, Surveillance, Violinist Sherlock
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-28
Updated: 2019-07-28
Packaged: 2020-07-23 22:21:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,637
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20015716
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tigresse/pseuds/Tigresse
Summary: Mycroft gets to know that on certain dark nights or stormy days, Sherlock plays a certain tune on his violin. That summons a certain someone to his doorstep.





	The Devil's Violinist

“Report?”

Ian was relatively new in Mycroft’s team and like all new incumbents wanted to please the big boss somehow. Enthusiastic to the point of annoying at times, he always did something extra and ended up causing more harm than good. Anthea, sensing her boss’s slow-building displeasure, had repositioned Ian to a task where extra efforts would not harm, ever.

“First of all sir, thanks for putting me in charge of your brother, the Great Detective Sherlock Holmes’ surveillance and safety,” Ian rattled off as Anthea stood by and held her breath. _What idiocy is he going to do next? I hope not, because the next available task for him would be a desk job_. But Ian proved to be better than he had expected. “I have noticed something strange about your brother and his unique habits,” Ian went on, “While on the surface everything seems perfect and he and his flat mate Dr. Watson are solving cases as usual, there are some strange anomalies I have spotted……”

“One second,” Mycroft stopped him, “John Watson is not just a flat-mate. He is my future brother in law and Sherlock’s partner.”

“I-I am not so sure about that.”

“What? What do you mean?”

“I mean…..it’s all about the violin.”

“You need to tell me what you’ve been smoking. Because you sure don’t make any sense to me. Yes, my brother is a bit strange. Most geniuses are strange. Yes he does play the violin, that too at odd hours, but that is not an anomaly but a habit. It’s regular. His neighbors have stopped complaining by now and use ear-plugs instead. But none of them would move away from there because they enjoy the tag of ‘Living on Baker Street, next door neighbor to Sherlock Holmes’.”

Ian shook his head so hard Anthea was afraid his neck would twist permanently. She was about to stop him from making a futile effort at this when he stumped them with his observation.

“Please hear me out,” the young operative said excitedly, “Whenever Mr. Holmes plays the violin it’s usually some of the notes he has composed, entire pieces he has strung together, or pretty popular pieces composed by famous composers of the past. But sometimes, mostly during days when he has no cases, during thundershowers, or in the absolute dead of the night, he plays one particular thing……Capriccio Nr. 24.”

“Ian I think Mr. Holmes here is not interested in knowing his baby brother’s musical tastes….” Anthea intervened, hoping she could get him out of the room before Mycroft used his famous two words ‘Reassign him’, but her boss surprised her. He raised his hand to stop her.

“Wait Anthea. Yes, go on Ian. The piece you’re talking about, I am quite familiar with it. I didn’t know about my brother’s habit of playing it during certain times though. So what else do you have to say about this pattern you spotted.”

Ian’s eyes glowed with happiness, obviously enthused by the praise he’d received from the big man himself.

“Every single time he plays that piece, everything goes quiet in Baker Street or very noisy. I mean, one day he played that piece and suddenly we heard cartoons being played in 221B. The television was on, volume turned up loud, in the middle of the night. The next day, Mr. Holmes misses a client meeting at 9 am because he won’t wake up. At 1 PM he is seen at the window and he appears to be…..drugged. Moments later a smoke bomb goes off on the street below and we are blinded for a full minute. Another day, he plays that during a thundershower and suddenly we lose footage. By the time we get things back in order Mr. Holmes is missing. He comes home at midnight, limping. But there is no case reported. Another time that piece was played, there was a sudden power cut there. Amidst all that we heard a dog barking constantly and loudly from 221B.”

“Dog?” Mycroft asked, “A dog? You sure?” He looked at Anthea who shrugged her shoulders. They both knew Sherlock would never keep a dog, not after Redbeard.

“Yes sir. I couldn’t control myself. I paid a discreet visit, as in, I managed to get to the first floor window to take a peek.”

“You did?!?”

“Yes. Yes sir, I did. Initially I thought Mr. Holmes was under threat because I saw him wresting with someone and even caught the flash of a knife blade in the darkness. Then I heard weird noises coming from both men and was unable to figure out who was killing whom. In the darkness I couldn’t see who the other man was but he was constantly grabbing your brother’s hairs and Mr. Holmes was trying to pin him down. Then I made an even funnier discovery.”

“You mean even funnier than my brother and an unknown assailant wrestling in the flat?” Mycroft was beginning to get the whole picture. He had a small grin tugging at the corners of his mouth. Even Anthea was smiling.

So Sherlock and John were at it, finally. _They were having sex_. Ian had obviously misinterpreted. Good, he was going to tell mummy not to pester him about Sherlock. John was going to be the official protector, care-giver and partner of his brother. Good choice!

“Yes, funnier,” Ian insisted, not backing off even a bit, “I saw the dog barking noises were coming from the living room, being played on loop on a small device attached to the laptop.”

“But why would they…..” Anthea stopped half way, realizing she had spoken out aloud. When she looked at Mycroft she saw the same question mark on his face. Why would Sherlock and John need to have that weird arrangement of the barking sounds of a dog wafting in from the next room and deafening the entire street. Unless of course they wanted to drown out the sounds they were making. But no, Sherlock was not such a prude.

“Did you see Dr. Watson in the room when this happened?” Mycroft queried.

The answer the man gave stirred a hornet’s nest and Mycroft and Anthea would continue to blame themselves for being so blind for months, or even years perhaps. “That is the last piece of the pattern I have noticed sir,” Ian continued, looking at some notes he had made in a diary, “Every single time this piece was played, it was when Dr. John Watson was not at home, not in town or doing a long shift at the hospital with multiple surgeries to take care of. In short, he was far away from the flat and not due to return anytime soon. Sometimes John….I mean Dr. Watson would be out on a date with one of his girls or out drinking with his buddies, that’s when Mr. Holmes would play this.”

Mycroft took a deep breath, “Ian, thanks a lot. You have done a fabulous job.”

Ian was a happy bunny and responded like the typical ‘teacher’s pet’ that he was. “Oh….thank you, THANK YOU SIR, thanks a lot, I am so honored to receive a word of praise from you. If you so wish I can…..”

“Ian,” Anthea stopped him before he undid all the good work by yapping too much, “Thank you. You may go now.”

***

“Sometimes a fresh pair of eyes helps,” Anthea said. She was speaking more to fill the prolonged and deafening silence in the room. Mycroft had not spoken a word since Ian had left and that was fifteen minutes ago.

“I have pieced together the puzzle,” Mycroft said.

Anthea nodded, waiting for her boss to continue; which Mycroft did after another five minutes of silence. “You see, there were three assumptions we made which blinded us to reality,” the elder Holmes sibling said, “One, Sherlock is shy about his sexuality and has no interest in sex. Two, he is in love with John and because John doesn’t seem to be in a steady relationship for a while, the good doctor must also be in love with Sherlock. Three, never trying to find out if he has a different love interest.”

“But sir, it could be casual sex he’s after.”

“If that is so, why would he lay out such an elaborate plot. He would just call them over or visit them. Why the smokescreen, the turned up volume on the TV, the dog bark being played on loop, those power cuts and other measures to keep my surveillance fooled. Well, nobody fools Mycroft and his team…….not for more than a year, I mean.”

“You seem to have some serious apprehensions here. I mean, you do tend to over-think and over-worry about Sherlock but even for you this seems to be a bit….off. A bit too much of anxiety. He is an adult and _he can have an affair_ , if he wants.”

“It’s not about whether he can have an affair,” Mycroft corrected her curtly, “It’s about who he’s having an affair with. Why does he have to put on such elaborate pretenses to shield that affair and the person involved? Knowing my brother, he is not asexual. He is sapiosexual and on occasion opportunity-sexual. He will sleep with someone if he wants to use them or their influence in some way. Or he will sleep with someone he feels a deep-seated mental and intellectual connection with. If he doesn’t want us to know, if he doesn’t even want John to know, then we do have something to be anxious about. I am going to find out Anthea. Throw your full weight behind this and tell me when I need to be there.”

“At 221B?”

“Yes. When he’s in….mating season.”

***

Anthea came back soon enough with a ‘slot’ that contained all possible indications that Sherlock might meet this mystery lover of his.

“Well spotted,” Mycroft said as he and Anthea settled into the room in a flat in the house right opposite 221B, aligned with the windows of Sherlock’s living room and bedroom.

“Yes sir,” Anthea replied, “John is out for two days. He has an assignment at a Liverpool hospital and left this morning. Sherlock showed great urgency in clearing his calendar of all client appointments and didn’t do the routine ‘check’ with Lestrade on any cases from the Yard. It’s stormy weather outside and there are scant chances of you or anyone else dropping in suddenly. The hour is late and he’s lingering around the living room, doing nothing but not really upset with the inactivity.”

“Thank God we put the cameras and microphones everywhere while they were out last evening for the Phyllis Smith case. Now we have our eyes and ears trained on my kid brother and whoeverelsethereis.”

“He’s not a kid…..”

“Enough.”

“Sorry.”

“Shhhh, he has picked up his violin.”

Sherlock stood next to the window, one eye on the street beneath and the other on the door of his flat. Positioning himself comfortably and carefully, he began to play. As soon as he started, Mycroft was distracted for a moment because the composition was rendered amazingly on his brother’s violin. Paganini’s Caprice 24, one of the most difficult pieces for any solo player. Parallel octaves, fast scales, high position, quick string crossings, Sherlock didn’t miss a single thing as he played like a man possessed. The music filled the room Mycroft and Anthea were sitting in and it was so haunting, so intense, so rich, that it quickly engrossed both of them completely. So much that Mycroft almost missed the next incident.

The footage from the street, the area and the 221B exteriors went blank, started to blur, then began to play on loop. The surveillance system was compromised. But inside the fabled Baker Street flat, in the ‘unknown’ cameras, nothing went wrong. The footage played as normal. Soon the lightning became a bit awry, too many blinding flashes. Someone was tampering with the weather??? That was really some superior technology that even Mycroft’s research wing had not yet perfected.

The door to Sherlock’s flat opened and a dark, hooded figure entered.

“Oh God,” Mycroft gasped.

“Who-Who is that sir?” Anthea exclaimed, showing a rare side of herself. She too was afraid.

“This is a piece popularized lately by David Garrett, the modern virtuoso, in a movie called ‘The Devil’s Violinist’,” Mycroft explained in a murmur, eyes on the screen as he watched the standoff between Sherlock and the suspiciously hooded figure, “It is said…..a myth though, that Paganini sold his soul to the Devil. This figure we see here, I can feel the sinister vibes oozing from it. I just hope Sherlock hasn’t……”

“Sold his soul to the Devil?!?”

“No, sold his soul to…..”

“OhGoddd!”

“Damn it. Just as I had half guessed and half hoped I’d be wrong.”

The cape and hood were off. Sherlock had put the violin down and opened out his arms. He had a big smile on his face. Mycroft had never seen him so happy. Even before he said a word it was quite clear how delighted he was to see the other man.

“Sherrrllyyyyy!”

“Jimmy…..my Magpie, my devil, the 221B sweetheart!”

“He calls him the 221B Sweetheart?” Anthea asked with her brows knotted together but Mycroft neither heard her properly nor did he respond. His eyes were glued to the screen as he watched Sherlock step forward and Jim fucking Moriarty leap into his arms, wrapping his slim legs around Sherlock’s hips as the detective effortlessly picked him up. Then their mouths came together and the kiss was so passionate that it even made a hard and unyielding heart like Mycroft’s melt and begin to tremble. It was the sort of scorching passion that could lick into one’s soul like a blazing flame or torch an entire forest like a flash fire. Muffled moans, gasps, hisses, sharp intakes of breath, throaty groans, those were the only sounds they could hear in that room for the next several minutes.

Until Jim the Devil said, “Play the music Sherlylocks, play the music. You know neither of us can be……soft?”

“No, we are always hard.”

“Soft voices.”

“You mean quiet.”

“Since when did you become a Grammar Nazi?”

“Since the moment you told me I am as useless as the ‘ueue’ in Queue.”

They both laughed and booped each other’s noses, then kissed again, this time gentler, more romantic, more sensuous. “I hope I am not useless anymore,” Sherlock said, in a voice Mycroft didn’t recognize because it was the typical husky bedroom voice, “Now that I have been trained by the best of the best.”

“One of a kind, top of the line, _always mine_ ,” Jim teased him, letting Sherlock put his feet back on the ground. In a flash his tie and jacket were off, as was Sherlock’s black single-breasted blazer. ‘Mmmm, the purple shirt of sex’ Jim muttered, unbuttoning it. Soon shoes were off, a belt hit the floor and Mycroft’s eyes grew big as one of Sherlock’s large hands slid into Jim’s trousers, cupping one of his pert arse cheeks.

They kept undressing each other until Jim was in a pair of dark blue briefs that clung to his private parts and left nothing to imagination. Mycroft was also a gay man, someone with a high sexual drive that he often curbed under the guise of work and other commitments and the occasional use of some pricey escorts, and he felt his pants tighten uncomfortably as he read the words on the back of the tiny fitted garment.

_‘Property of Sherlock Holmes’_

“Seriously?” He mumbled, “This is college freshman stuff.”

Sherlock was in his pajamas and from the way they tented and Jim pawed at him, they didn’t need any genius to conclude that he was wearing nothing underneath. Some more groping continued, the kisses kept happening, and things got knocked off their places as they stumbled through the room and went towards the bedroom. Mycroft could hear his brother say something about getting a new mattress and expensive Egyptian cotton sheets and Jim moaning, before Jim suddenly pushed Sherlock away. His voice was pure sex when he spoke, thick and honeyed, filled with need and arousal. ‘The music Sherly, the music! How many times do I have to remind you?’

“Your fault.”

“ _My_ fault?”

“Yup. You drive me crazy. I’ll take you against the door.”

“Noooo, first round is mine. I take you.”

“As you wish my Magpie.”

Sherlock pressed a button on some device, then adjusted the laptop settings. Suddenly loud notes of Paganini’s Caprice 24 began to fill the flat and permeate the entire section of the street. Jim giggled, Sherlock chased him into the bedroom and Mycroft switched cameras. He side-eyed Anthea, who was watching with rapt attention, and quickly decided that he wasn’t going to watch his younger brother have sex with the lady seated by his elbow. “Anthea,” he said, “You can leave now.”

“No, you might need me.”

“Why would I?”

“I-I mean, if you make a deduction and want me to take action immediately…..”

“Then you’ll be around to take that action. But you don’t need to be here. let’s give them some privacy.”

She clearly understood what he needed. It was _Mycroft who needed privacy_. Saying no to him was not an option, no matter how curious she was about Sherlock and Jim’s affair. She knew better than to defy the big man. “Yes, of course, boss,” she said and stepped out of the room. She could still hear the sounds though, _some of them_ , whatever she could hear over the noise of the violin music. Having no other ways of telling what was going on in there, she closed her eyes and used her imagination to the fullest.

***

A soft curse left Mycroft’s throat as he let out a moan and came in his hand. For a moment his brain didn’t work properly and he struggled to reconcile himself to the reality that Sherlock had truly taken him by surprise and managed to score where even he had failed.

The sneaky little rascal was banging Moriarty? JIM MORIARTY?!? Mycroft had watched them have sex, every single move and movement, through agape eyes. Abandoning shame and propriety somewhere in a dark recess of his mind, he had indulged himself by relishing those moments which he had stolen into. He felt like a bastard, an uncool intruder, but then who cared about being cool when one could get hot under the collar?! It was like watching a private porn show, with his favorite actors in it. It did creep him out initially that he was actually watching his sibling have sex but that feeling soon went, as he watched the two of them burn the sheets with their passion.

Jim fucked Sherlock into oblivion at first, making good on his word that the first round was his. It was a quick but hard round of sex where he nearly decimated Sherlock’s much larger figure into the mattress. Sherlock lay there and took it, encouraging his so-called adversary with verbal and nonverbal clues, grabbing his butt cheeks and pressing him even deeper inside. Once they had a fantastic, almost overwhelming orgasm, Sherlock had wrapped his arms around Jim and pulled him down. Ten minutes was all they needed to recuperate and get hard again and this time Jim rode Sherlock so hard that everything around the bed, on the nightstands, the wall, fell off.

But while that gave Mycroft a spontaneous orgasm and enough hot memories to enjoy some ‘time-alone’, it was the other subtle things he had noticed with his hawk-eyes which started to hit him with some realities.

This was not sex. _Not just sex_. He had never seen his brother in such rapture and ecstasy or so comfortable with someone else. Not even John. Even when the sex was over, he had held Jim all night in his arms, lovingly, protectively, jumping awake at the slightest sounds, obviously worried about Jim’s safety. He had never seemed this happy and the smile he had on his face when Jim entered his flat, that was the purest and most unadulterated smiles Mycroft had seen on his brother’s face since…..he had lost his best friend in childhood.

_This made sense._

Sherlock had finally found an equal. Someone who was neither resentful of his talent and brilliance nor overwhelmed by it. If he took such complicated measures to sneak Jim into his flat or sneak out to visit Jim, and even dedicated a certain piece on the violin to Jim, then this was serious. It was definitely not a passing phase or some kind of random fling. Jim, despite his profession, made Sherlock happy.

Sherlock had truly become the Devil’s violinist.

At the same time the Devil on earth was dancing to the tunes of the man whose fingers played on the strings. Jim had not seemed like an unwilling participant or someone with an agenda. In that case he would have fucked, got fucked in return and left. Why would he stay back the night and wake up to tea in bed from Sherlock, then cook an omelet for him for breakfast while wearing Sherlock’s clothes! But then….again….Jim was a criminal mastermind, a psychopath, someone who couldn’t be trusted with one’s eyes shut. He couldn’t let his brother walk into the madman’s lair without first setting some checks and preparing some balances.

Oh yes, he needed to know if Jim’s feelings were true, pure and without agenda.

Mycroft’s hand traveled below his waistline as a sneaky grin crept up on his face. Yes, he knew just how to find this out.

And it would be great fun!

**Author's Note:**

> Jimcroft happens in second chapter. Patience please! :-D


End file.
